Today is now day three of our new jobs that we have started in Ceduna. Jamie is working as an electrician with the local sparky, also called Jamie, and I am a Pharmaxy assistant at the pharmacy in town. But first let me fill you in on what we have been up to for the last week, since leaving Adelaide yet again.
We took our time packing everything up to leave on Monday morning, so we only ended up setting off at 2pm with hopes to get past Whyalla. As we drove, a weather pattern was forming which took the previous days 35 degrees down to about 23 degrees and brought some rain along with it. The one benefit of that was the awesome sunset that it created turning the entire sky into an endless ball of orange/red fire. However, as darkness fell and we still had yet more driving to do, we started to get pretty miserable, due to the fact that it was 9pm and we hadn’t stopped for dinner. Luckily by the time we did eventually find a suitable camp spot, the rain had eased and allowed us to erect our tent without being saturated.
The next day was a shorter drive to take us to Port Lincoln. The weather remained at around 23 degrees, which felt wintry compared to the 35+ we experienced in the centre. We looked into the shark cage diving while we were in Port Lincoln, only to find it was busy enough to be sold out for the next couple of weeks. So we have instead booked in for mid December where we will do a trip from Ceduna to Lincoln. I can’t say if we are more excited or nervous at the prospect of it.
We decided to bush camp outside of Port Lincoln, however Lincoln National Park doesn’t allow dogs, so to get around that we camped literally at the signed entrance to the national park. We later found out that was private property so we technically weren’t allowed there either, but no one bothered us. It was a stunning spot to camp, right in between a large clear blue lake and giant sand dunes. Over the sand dunes the rugged coast provided sweeping views as well. Pumba certainly enjoyed being let free on the sand dunes where he would careen up and over them and then sprint down in a puff of fine white sand. We used our camp oven (kindly lent to us by Dennis) for the first time and made a slow cooked Italian lamb shank meal on the fire. We were rewarded with another stunning sunset, which we watched from the top of the dunes while Pumba continued to leap around crazily.
The next morning Jamie found a cliff spot to fish from and we were lucky enough to catch some decent sized mullet and some salmon trout for dinner. We also did some dune driving while in the national park and even a kayak in the lake, all before 12pm! We headed again onto our next spot which was a campsite called ‘The Ledge’. The site was at the tip of a peninsula at coffin bay which was just across the water from the town of coffin bay but you had to drive ½ an hour all the way around to get there, or swim 200metres across the bay. It was another awesome spot, surrounded by scrub and the beautiful bay. We walked around to explore the area, finding lots of tiny little crabs living among the seaweed before cooking up our freshly caught fish and quinoa salad dinner.
The next day Jamie had organised to catch up with his dad’s friend Cactus, who owns an Oyster lease, so we were lucky enough to go out on his boat and learn the ways of an oyster farmer. Since we weren’t in our wetsuits, I don’t think we were all that much help and instead just lazed around on the boat in the sun (tough life really). We were taught about the baby oysters and the different stages involved in growing them to a commercial size. It really is a lot of work that goes into constantly maintaining the oyster leases. We even got to spot a rare osprey and a seal while we were on the water, as well as sample both the Pacific oyster and the local oyster. All in all, a pretty hard days work! Jamie collected some mussels from the beach around camp, for us to have for dinner as we hadn’t caught any fish that day, so we again dined on the finest seafood.
Moving on from Coffin Bay we caught up with some friends John and Barb who live at Kiana. They had a whole host of stumpy tail lizards living on their property, which we hand fed strawberries to. We did some exploring of the beach at Kiana as well which had drastically changed from the recent storms. What used to be a nice sandy beach, was now 3 metere high boulders along the rocky beach. It almost made it more beautiful and certainly more unique. Jamie attempted some more fishing but didn’t catch anything big enough to keep so we kept going, we camped at Mount Drummond among the sand dunes to try and avoid the winds. Jamie did more fishing while I chewed through an entire 600 page novel within a few days.
Our last day before reaching Ceduna, we stopped at The Granites to check out the surf, but it wasn’t really big enough so we went to Point Labbatt to see the largest colony of Australian Sea Lions. It is a beautiful, protected spot for the sea lions to breed and not be disturbed by anyone as the lookout is high up on the cliffs. The female sea lions can get to 150kgs and 2 metres long, but the males can reach 400kgs and 3 metres in length!! You would not want to be up against one of those, that’s for sure! We had lunch at sSoky Bay and stopped off to buy a couple dozen oysters and then headed to Jamie’s uncle and aunt's house in Ceduna. The house has a great ocean view and we couldn’t be more happy to have a room with an ensuite all to ourselves!! Uncle Andy showed us how to shuck oysters and we had an entrée of fresh oysters with lemon and worcestershire sauce, followed by steak and salad for main and homemade and home-grown apricot crumble. We were then both shown the ropes of what our jobs would entail, mine as a pharmacy assistant and Jamie working with the local electrician. So we will settle here until Christmas working our respective jobs and enjoying the local cuisine, beaches and fishing while here.
